Toyota's $50 million to Tesla could pay off well for both, and it represents only a couple days of Toyota's R&D expenditure.

In four days of meetings here in Japan with executives, including company chief Akio Toyoda, the most newsworthy disclosures are those involving Toyota's $50 million investment in . At first, the deal announced earlier this year seemed to make very little sense. Closer examination suggests otherwise.

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Why would this Japanese giant want linkage with a Silicon Valley upstart? True, Toyota is currently rebounding from quality hassles, massive product recalls, Congressional rough-ups and more than a bit of corporate bashing. And, yes, fledgling Tesla has now sold more than 1100 Roadsters, its electric vehicle with exceptional performance and genuine sports car cred.

Yet, the Tesla Roadster costs rather more than $100,000, for what's essentially an EV conversion of the , the MSRP of which is only about half this figure. And Tesla's Model S, not expected until 2012 and itself a $50,000 car, is hardly going to be an EV sedan in the Toyota Everyman tradition.

So why the deal?

Points to consider: Toyota is investing "only" $50 million in Tesla. This is decidedly less than the $465 million we as U.S. taxpayers have already lent Tesla. What's more, and positively astounding, this $50 million represents just a tad more than two days' expenditure of Toyota's global research and development budget. That is, it's been figured that Toyota invests about $1 million per hour in its own R&D around the world.

Like the bumblebee's apocryphal lack of flying ability, this multiplicity of small cells shouldn't work. Failure of one cell can lead to catastrophic destruction of the entire pack. And, statistically, when the baffling number of cells, connectors and associated hardware is considered, failure of something seems almost a given. Only by really innovative engineering in monitoring and control have Tesla engineers been able to achieve this wizardry.

Meanwhile, back in Toyota City, near Nagoya, Japan, there's an eight-story building with some 3000 engineers committed entirely to battery R&D and related areas. This is where Toyota performs its own brand of wizardry in energy storage, battery electrics, hybrid and fuel cell hardware. I suspect engineers there looked at this bumblebee of Tesla energy storage and wondered why it hadn't self-destructed as yet. This would seem all the more challenging, what with more than 1100 Roadsters out in the harsh real world where rigors of road surface, extremes of temperature and other nasty thing make these laptop batteries seem a particularly inappropriate choice.

Had Toyota R&D pondered more than 50 hours on this, they would have blown more money than the company did in its $50 million Tesla investment. Now Toyota can learn from Tesla—and vice versa. Tesla certainly didn't have an eight-story building and 3000 people supporting its own EV engineering, quality, reliability and durability issues. But now, through technical exchange, it does.

And there's more to this win-win.

's going belly-up left Toyota holding the bag in a big way with their jointly held New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc facility in Fremont, California. Left with nothing to build there, Toyota shuttered NUMMI in April of this year, incurring considerable termination payments, huge pension responsibilities, substantial shutdown costs and the like. Plus, of course, ticking off workers and alienating the local community. GM's bankruptcy deftly sidestepped all this.

At the same time, in nearby Silicon Valley, Tesla was pondering the problem of new digs for production of its Model S. For awhile, Southern California was in the running, but then came along the tantalizing availability of the NUMMI facility.

Tesla's Elon Musk meets Toyota's Akio Toyoda, and it's a done deal (though I suspect it wasn't all this straightforward...). Once all the paperwork was signed, Toyota invested the equivalent of a couple days' cash in R&D, Tesla bought itself a production facility—and prospects of a joint venture lived again in Fremont, California.

Here in Tokyo, Akio Toyoda confirmed that Toyota is already evaluating Tesla powertrain hardware and software (the latter, considered a real Tesla asset) in a possible joint effort. What's more, he expressed satisfaction in improving NUMMI's prospects as well local perceptions of Toyota in the community. For the period 1998-2000, Akio Toyoda managed the facility there; he knows and likes the area.

What's more, there's yet another personal aspect to all this. Akio-san's grandfather Kiichiro Toyoda could have entered his father's thriving loom business. The latter invented high-speed loom technology around the turn of the last century, thereby earning worldwide patents and licensing. However, Kiichiro was an engineer with a distinct enthusiasm for automobiles. And this entrepreneurial spirit led to the founding of Toyota Motor Company, Ltd, in 1937. (Note the family name Toyoda ends in the Japanese character da, field. The company name Toyota replaced this with ta, a character with less rural overtones.)

When Akio Toyoda and Elon Musk conferred, it was clearly the meeting of two entrepreneurial spirits. And the best of such people recognize the importance of win-win in such interactions. Thus far, the Toyota-Tesla deal appears to follow this model.